E 185 
.97 
.W52 




Book_ 



f7 



,Ws^ 



''A Joshua in the Camp/' 



OR, THE LIFE OF 




Booker T. Washington, 

TUSKEGEE, ALABAMA. 



CoJIl'l.LUENTS oV 



H. RUFUS WHITE, 



\ 



Editor of 'The Suburban Enterprise.' 



*'A Joshaa in the: (^amp;' 



or th£ life of 



Sooi^er S. Waishington, 



• of gasi^egee, Alabama. 




Attorney- AT-I.AW and Editor of The Suburban Enterprise, 

TOWSON, MARYI.AND. 

1895. 



E 



TDEDICA TIO[I\C' 

To theyoimg manhood and womanhood of the Colored 
T{ace which O^r. IVashington is laboring to promote, 
this work is respectfully dedicated 

'By the arthur. 



A JOSHUA IN THE CAMP. 



BY H. RUFUS WHITE. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

That there has never lived in this country a colored man so 
prominent, at least, as was the late lamented Frederick Doug- 
lass goes withoutsaying, and there is no doubt that in many 
respects he was the greatest man the race in America has pro- 
duced. Much of his greatness was, during his lifetime, partially 
obscured by the prejudice agaiust him on the one hand and 
jealousy on the other ; but, dispite this, Douglass was a great 
man even in the eyes of his enemies. He was a leader. While 
the ordinary mind was dealing with a single problem, Douglass' 
great mind, like that of the philosopher, was unraveling a chain 
of problems whose effects were universal. While the ordinary 
or private soldier was trying to climb a single craig, Douglass, 
like Napoleon, was planning the entire conquest and subjuga- 
tion of Italy. A causual perusal of his life's works and 
utterances will show the truthfulness of these comparisons. It 
was Douglass who, when Iyinx:oln was pondering over the advis- 
ability of using colored men to garrison forts and dig trenches, 
urged the placing into their hands the muskets and enrolling their 
names as regular full-paid soldiers, and the same extremes char- 
acterized his views on the questions of emancipation, suffrage, 
and the efforts of the colored man regarding his own advance- 
ment. It was these things which made Douglass the leader of 
his own people and the peer of the leaders of the white race. 
Having completed his work, we were not surprised to see him 
hand back to General Harrison the portfolio of the Haytian 
ministry and settle down in quietude among the cedars of Ana- 
costia, from whence, like the exiled and regicide Colonel Goffe, 
he came out once in a while to do"one more good deed for God's 
people. " Over his bier men will uncover and call him Douglass 
the leader, Douglass the great ! 



I 



On the day following his demise it was said that there would 
probably never be again a concurance of the circumstances 
which made Douglass great, and I believe it is tru«. 

Douglass was a creation of a certain age, it seems fitted and 
moulded in the moulds from which iconoclasts come, and design- 
ed to give to the world a living object lesson on the subject of 
man's Brotherhood. When this was done -'God touched him 
and he slept." 

Israel is still in the wilderness. Moses has been taken away, 
and some seem to think that there is not even a Joshua in the in 
the camp. The purpose of this pamplet is to show that there is 
a Joshua in the camp, and that he is receiving that ''good suc- 
cess" which God promised. 

Times have changed and with this change have come new 
measures and new problems which demand new men to deal 
with and solve them. The uniting of beligerent fragments into 
a German Empire required the hand of a Bismark, but the 
meeting and settling of questions pertaining to the devolop- 
ment of German manhood and resources requires a bold, jovial 
and fearless William. Colored men have their freedom (some 
have, possibly, too much of it) and citizenship for which Doug- 
lass labored, but they have not grasped the new ideas which these 
changes brought about, viz: the nobility of labor, the rigid appli- 
cation of theorj' to practic, and the judicial use of the almighly 
dollar, "which alway elects its candidate," be he white or black. 
This is the condition which Douglass could not change, but which 
he left as a legacy to his successor when he "handed back to his 
people the tiara of leadership;" and it is upon the successful 
meeting of these issues that the future success of the colored man 
in this country depends. 

i The colored race at this time needs no iconoclast. What it 
needs is a leader and a teacher — a leader broad and liberal in his 
views, well versed in the relation which the races sustain to each 
other; a lovor of his own race, a respecter of what is noble and 
good in the other and a friend of both. A teacher who thorough- 
ly understands both the subject and the pupils which he teaches 
simple in precept, profound in reason and gifted with the tact of 
impressing the truthfulness of his teaching upon the minds and 
hearts of his pupils. Such a man we have in our midst, and un- 



consciously to himself the mantle of Douglass fell upon his shoul- 
ders, and he is wearing it with becoming dignity and grace. 
This man is Booker T. Washington, Principal of the Tuskegee, 
Alabama, Normal and Industrial Institution — a Joshua in the 
camp. J 

^ THE MAN. 

Having made a lengthy introduction, we shall in this and the 
following divisions consider the man, his work and what 
others say of him, then we shall leave our readers to judge wheth- 
er or not we have established our claim. 

Booker T. Washington was born a slave at Hale's Ford, Va., ' 
April, 185S. The place of his birth and early childhood was the 
old conventional one room quarter-house with a dirt. floor and a 
"potato hole" in the middle of the room where sweet potatoes 
were kept during the winter. He was the "chattel" of a family 
by the name of Burrows, but being young he experienced little 
of the rigors of slavery. Soon after the war he went with his 
step-mother to Maiden, \Y. Va., where he worked in salt furances 
for nine months in the year and attended school for three months. 
After spending several years in this manner, young Washington 
secured work in the house of a kind but exacting New England 
lady where he remained until 1871, attending night school under 
a privaie tutor and picking up information in whatever way he 
could. At this time, having heard of the Hampton school, he 
resolved to go there and make his way as best he could; accord- 
ingl)^ taking what little money he had been able to save from his 
wages ($6.00 per month), he started for Hampton. When he 
reached Richmond, Va., he found himself friendless, homeless, 
shelterless and penniless. After looking around he found a hole 
in the sidewalk and in this hole he spent his first night in the 
Confederate Capitol. As luck would have it, on the next morn- 
ing when he awoke, he found himself near a vessel that was un- 
loading pig iron. He made application to the captain for work 
and it was given him. Mr. Washington worked there until he had 
made money enought to pay his way to Hampton, and to use his 
own words, he reached Hampton with but 50 cents in his pocket 
and nothing in his head. He remained at Hampton until he grad- 
uated with the honors of his cla.ss, having worked his way 
through. After graduating he returned to his old home and 



taught school for a while then further pursued his studies at Way- 
land Seminary, Washington, D. C. While at Wayland, Mr. 
Washington was invited to become a teacher at Hampton which 
he did. In this capacity he remained at Hampton two years, un- 
til 1881, when application was made to Gen. Armstrong by citi- 
zens of Tuskegee, Ala., for some one to start an institution at that 
place on the plan of Hampton. With hundreds from whom to 
select, Mr. Washington was the one selected. The wisdom of 
this choice will be seen by generations yet to come. 

Mr. Washing is a teacher in all that that term implies He is 
not only a teacher when in his school room he is knocking the 
rough bark off a sapling cut from the forests of Alabama, but 
among the foremost educators of this country, Booker T. Wash- 
ington is known and honored as an able and distinguished educa- 
tor whose work has been the subject of articles published in some 
of the leading magazines both of this country and England. 

In its issue of August 19, '93, the "Out-Look," formerly 
Christian Union (New York) paid a high tribute to the Negro race. 
The "Out Look" pubHshed the pictures of 28 of the leading col- 
lege presidents of this country, and among them, by the side of 
President Eliot of Harvard, President Timothy Dwight of 
Yale, President Potter of Princeton, President Harper of Chicago 
University, was the picture of President Booker T. Washington 
of the Tuskegee Institution, (Tuskegee, Alabama), a young man 
who was born a slave 38 years ago, who worked his way thorough 
the Hampton Institute and now presides over the largest Negro 
Institution (where teachers and pupils are all colored) in the world. 
In personal appearance, as we saw him eleven years ago, Mr. 
Washington is tall in statue, somewhat slim with a clean youth- 
ful, almost boyish face, high forehead, piercing eyes looking out 
from under heavy eye brows and firm lips which seldom relax 
into a smile, A stranger would take him for an Episcopalian 
minister instead of a teacher. A perfect gentleman, modest, un- 
selfish too busy with his life's work to think of himself, Mr. Wash- 
ington goes right on doing all the good he can for his unfortunate 
people. Mr, T. L. Mann says of him in the Indianopolis Free- 
man : "It seems a direct act of Providence that the field should 
be kept open until this Moses should come to lead his people out 
of the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge. The 
man was called, his mission came from on high, and should you 



visit his great school, you would exclaim with the "Sage of Ana* 
costia" "I see a change, a great change. I can exclaim like 
John in the apocalatic vision, I see a new heaven and a new 

earth." 

HIS WORKS. 

There can be but one standard by which the claim of any man 
upon greatness and leadership can be successfully established, and 
that is through his works ahd their results. The prophet is 
known by his prophesies and their fulfillment. The great man 
must secure his title by deeds of greatness, and the leader by per- 
forming the functions of leadership. That Booker T. Washing- 
ton has secured both of these titles is an undisputed fact, and 
therefore admits no argument. But some dispute the extent of 
liis leadership; they said it is not universal as was that of the 
lamented Douglass: they say that, like T. Thomas Fortune, the 
gifted writer and editor of the New York Age, he is a special- 
ist, and thus imply that the work which he is doing in his school 
and on the rostrum is not universal in its comprehension and far- 
reaching in its influnce. This we deny, and we think, with good 
reason, which we shall endeavor to show further on. 

It is no our purpose to cut down any tree in the forest that ours 
may appear the more towering; but we can. with a single stroke 
of the pen, show the fallacy of the claims to leadership of a\\ 
those great men whose names have come to us in connection with 
the position which Douglass so ably filled for more than a quarter 
of a century; yet we admire each man for those accomplishments 
which have redounded to the good of the race. 

Now there is one Mr. Cuney, of Texas, who is simply a 19th 
century American poUtician- -no stateman, no diplomate no schol- 
ar, no orator, simply a poUtician. Bishop Lee, a refined Chris- 
tain minister, honored by his church. Here his star descends. 
Hon. John Mercer Langstou, a text-book oratorial egotist who 
has been honored by several administrations, and this is enough 
said, if you have read his book. And lastly, there is T. Thomas 
Fortune who without a doubt is the most gifted writer the race 
has produced since the war, but you known that the man who 
simply writes must be cold in death before this "sin cussed" 
world can properly appreciate his writing. Either of these gen- 
tlemen might die to-morrow and the loss would be local. Not 



8 

so with Booker T. Washington, for his is a work which effects 
not only his own race but alike the Cancasian, for its chief object 
is to show (which is admirabl}^ being done) that whatever voca- 
cation is honorable enough for an honest man to pursue in order 
to win his bread and butter, imposes upon the man the duty of 
dignifying that vocation. This is not only in keeping with the 
most advanced and practical ideas of to-day, but it reaches back 
to the dutiee imposed upon man when he was driven away from 
Edenic bliss. 

Now we come to the plain questions of industrial and business 
education, both of which were touched upon by Mr. Douglass, the 
first when he asked his colored brethren if they got up as early 
to work for themselves as they had done to work for their mas- 
ters, and the latter is shown in his purchase and improvement of 
property at Baltimore and Bay Ridge — the accomplishment of his 
letter-day dreams. 

Mr. Washington's work comprises these two questions, and 
with them unites economy, the judicious use of money, the abol- 
ition of the mortgage system, a proper regard for hygenic laws, 
and suggests what to our minds is the only true solution to the 
race question-the possession by colored men of that which white 
men will respect. The man who is ignorant of these facts is indeed 
unqualified to hail any one as the leader of the race. 

In all of these things the work of Mr. Washington is universal 
in that it eftects the whole race. Everywhere reading men and 
women have read of his Farmer's Conferences, his plain common- 
sense utterances, and his noble work in his school. 

According to nature's laws, the water of a stream can be no 
purer than the source from which it comes. The proper way to 
purify the water is to clean out the spring. Mr. Washington is 
doing more than this. In his conferences and on the rostrum he 
is purifying the homes of his people, while at his school he is 
putting the streams through filters of charcoal in order that the 
coming generations may trace their parentage to sources as pure 
and as clear as sunlight. 

This is not the work of Douglass, the iconoclast. This is not 
the work of an orator "whose eloquence burst like a clap of thun- 
der from a clear sky. " But it is the work of the leader and the 
teacher that Mr. Washington is. It is the work of the man who 
first takes high ground himself, then by appealing to the under- 



standing of his followers leads them step by step onward and up- 
ward to something nobler and better. 

HIS SCHOOL. 

In the heart what is known as the '-Black Belt" of Alabama is 
an institution at which nearly one thousand colored boy and girls 
are being yearly led further and further away from ignorance, 
idleness and vice, and whose minds are being impregnated with 
nobler conceptions of what is truly great and good in life. This 
institution- grand and magnificent in all its proportions--is a liv- 
ing, animated monument to the ability, genius, greatness and 
leadership of its worthy principal and founder, Booker T. Wash- 
ington. 

No doubt Holmes had in mind such a man as Mr. Washington 
when he said that no man who deserves a monument should ever 
have one. 

When Mother Nature shall have reclaimed Mr. Washington as 
her own, what nobler monument could he desire to his memory 
than Tuskegee with her various departments, her boys being 
made intellectual men and skilled mechanics, and her girls culti- 
vating every virtue and learning every detail necessary to the 
development of the successful woman? 

Aside from these, there have already taken their places in the 
world men and women filled with the inspiration of Tuskegee 
principles and teachings, who in years to come when the claim 
of some man will be brought forth as the greatest of his race, will 
rise up with voices pathetic and hearts filled with devotion, call 
to memory BookerT. Washington, his works, his school, hiscon- 
ferencee, and the testimony of others as to his greatness and 
leadership. 

The Nashville American, in its edition of March _i2th, last, 
speaking of industrial education, said among other things : "The 
Tuskegee Institute was founded for the purpose of giving indus- 
trial training and education to colored pupils, and the entire State 
of Alabama is now experiencing great benefits from the good 
work done at the school." 

General Armstrong, founder of the -Hampton Institution, said 
of Tuskegee : "The Norman and Industrial Institution, with its 
six hundred students, $200, ooc worth of land and buildings, six- 



lO 



ty-two teachers, twenty-five of whom are graduates of Hampton, 
and an annual expense of ^65,000, so far secured, is a wonderful 
growth, (about equal to that of this school in the same period), 
and is, I thmk, the grandest and noblest work of any colored man 
in the land. What compares with it in genuine power and value 
for good. It is on the Hampton plan, combining labor and study; 
commands high respect from both races: flies no denominational 
flag, but is thoroughly and earnestly Christain, is out of debt, well 
managed and organized. Mr. Washington deserves cordial assist- 
ance. Should not good people consider that he is made of flesh 
and blood, and unite to see him through, and fix forever a great 
light in the "Black Belt" of Alabama? Next to Frederick 
Douglass, Mr. Washington is the ablest negro in the country, and 
is doing the grandest and most successful work of any colored man 
in the land." 

This last quotation is the expressed opinion of a man who 
devoted his life's labors to the education of black boys and girls, 
and the man to whom Mr. Washington is greatly indebted for 
what he is to-day. The recommendation of any institution or any 
man coming from such a source can be but beneficial and helpful. 
Tuskegee, like Hampton, differs from so many iustitutions for 
colored boys and girls in that it impresses upon their minds the 
fact that they are preparing to lift burdens from the shoulders of 
their brethren, and in order to do this they must not be afraid to 
come in contract with those who are less fortunate than them- 
selves. In short, Tuskegee teaches its pupils to speak, read and 
write English before they attempt Greek, Latin and Sanscrit ; it 
puts common fractions in the young man's head before _ it puts 
Csesar under his arm ; it teaches him to hoe corn before it takes 
him into the region of stars ; it teaches him the truthfulness of 
the maxim ''Labor ovinia vincent." 

Tuskegee fails wherein so many of our institutions succeed, 
that is in putting big heads on its students, thereby unfitting them 
for life's battles. Too often we have heard young men quote 
Cicero to unculivated audiences when they ought to have been 
using those plain, common-sense expressions which have placed 
Mr. Washington among the formost orators of the day. 

When the masses of our people shall have become thoroughly 
imformed as to the needs of to-day; when colored men shall have 
learned wherein their great strength lieth, then the work of Tus- 



II 



kegee will be more appreciated and the greatness and leadership 
of Booker T. Washington will be universally acknowledged 
and conceded. 

HIS CONFERENCE AND SPEECHES. 

Probably in no phase of Mr. Washington's work, not even in 
the building and management of the great institution, at whose 
head he stands shows his greatness and power of leadership more 
than the Annual Conferences which he holds at Tuskegee. These 
Conferences unlike political and other clans which are wonted to 
assemble having in view a single purpose, are shorn of politics 
in its narrow sense, but attempt to make men better citizens in 
the fullest sense of the word. They are broad in their conceptions 
for while the invitation is addressed to the colored men as the 
class most needing their help, white men are extended a cordial 
welcome, and many have expressed themselves as having been 
benefitted by their attendance. This phase of Mr. Washington's 
work shows his greatness and leadership because in this he has 
not only successfully called together large bodies of men of vari- 
ous minds and circumstances, but he has succesfully shaped a 
policy or course of action for them which has far removed 
them from their former condition. To substantiate this last 
statement we need but cite a quotation from a letter written 
by Miss Alice M. Bacon, a teacher at Hampton and pub- 
lished in the "Congregationalist," and used by Mr. Albert 
Shaw, in a letter to the ''Review of Reviews'" on "Negro 
Progress on the Tuskegee Plan." This estimable lady who at- 
tended the last Conference and wrote : "It was interesting to 
notice during the discussion how many changes were said to 
have taken place since the last Conference or since the first Con- 
ference. The Tuskegee Farmers' Conference evidently fur- 
nishing an incentive to whole communties, and a date from 
which events were to be reckoned. Many had been putting up 
school houses since the last conference. So great a change in the 
matter of one-room cabins was noted as dating from the Confer- 
ence, that the original fraction used in the declaration that four- 
fifths of the people were still living in one-room cabins, was 
changed after the discussion to two-thirds as nearer the present 
state of affairs." 



12 



Here, then is an institution "furnishing an incentive to whole 
communities," and like the Olympiad, "a date from which events 
were to be reckoned, and a continual decrease in the value of the 
fraction representing the destitution of space necessary to the pos 
session by every home of the privacy necessary to its highest 
and purest moral atmosphere. Such an accomplishment as this 
alone would be calculated to make Mr. Washington a leader, tut 
this, as all who have followed my week and imperfect presenta- 
tion of the subject so far will recognize, constitutes only a portion 
of the excellent work which this grand leader has done and is 
doing. 

Aside from all this Mr. Washington is an orator of the first 
magnitude. His is not the thundering voice of Douglass as 
aimed at the bulwarks of slavery, which had enslaved all black 
men of the South and were fast making the white men of the 
North the sleuth hounds of Soutnern slave-drivers, but it is the 
calm, gentle voice of Lincoln at Gettysburg which arouses pat- 
riotism and inspires pride; it is the voice of the great Hollander 
counseling his people not to invade the sacred and vested rights 
of others, but to force back the ocean from their own shores and 
thus, by overcoming nature, increase their domain. Want of 
space prevents us from saying more in this connection. So we 
will close this part by quoting from a letter from Mr. Henry Mc- 
P'arland, to the "Philadelphia Record," in which he says: 
"Booker T. Washington delivered in the hall of the Colored Y. 
M. C. Association, Washington, D. C, the most sensible and 
practical talk on how his race should work out its own material 
salvation which I ever heard or read. * ^i: * Washington is in- 
deed a remarkable man, intellectually, in several different ways, 
but not even his executive ability, marked as it is, is so extraor- 
dinary as his common-sense. Thiswas so evidentin his talk the 
other night that he carried his audience with him from beginning 
to end, and even men like Douglass and Langston were forced 
to applaud utterances, which, when they did not run counter to 
what they themselves had said, put them to blush by contrast. 
He indulged in no flights of rhetoric, but his cold facts, with 
homely but striking illustrations, were more convincing than 
eloquence." 



I 



13 

WHAT OTHERS SAY OF HIM. 

That I am not alone in the opinion that to-day Booker T. 
Washington is a great man and the leader of his race, is, I think, 
well attested in the qoutations below, may of which were written 
while the blood still circulated through the veins of the "sage of 
Anacostia." The Washington News said of Mr. Washington : 
"The colored man who can persuade any number of his fellows 
that there is as much dignity in munual work as in preaching a 
sermon or being an attorney-at-law is a real benefactor not only to 
his own race, but to the whites." 

"Providence seems to have put Mr. Washington in a place of 
leadership, and furnished him with an opportunity for pointing 
to his people the way upward, which makes him a factor of the 
first importance in the progress of his race," says the Chicago 
Advance. Prof. Wm. Patterson says: "This man is to the 
Negroesof American what Arnold was to the Brittish." "The 
entire State of Alabama is now experiencing great benefits from 
the good work done at his (Tuskegee) school." The Nashville 
American : "Surely, if we take into account his great work, it is 
not going too far to place Mr. Washington among the foremost 
men of his country and time." says the Boston Courant. 

"There is no man in this whole country that has done more for 
our people than Prof. Booker T. Washington, of the Tuskegee, 
(Ala.) Institute." Daily Herald, Quincy, 111. 

"Earnestness, simplicity and commonsence characterized the 
man and his addresses at the Congregational Church January 
20th. Very large congregations greeted him both morning and 
evening, and no one could have more attentive listeners. He 
speaks with great rapidity, with much emphasis, but weaves in 
his humor so that it is never wearisome. His stories were full of 
wit and always to the point. Some passages we exceedingly 
eloquent, especially one last evening where he described the con- 
trast between the negro when he entered slavery and when he 
came out. He interested every one greatly on the subject. Mr. 
Washington goes from here to Chicago, where he speaks in Dr. 
Gunsaulus' and Dr. McPherson's churches." 

The Boston Daily Globe in an editorial in its issue of Aug. 

24th, last, says : "The directors of the Atlanta Exposition have 

Alone the right thing at the right time. They have invited that 



14 

able representative of "the colored South," Booker T. Washing- 
ton, of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial, to deliver one of the 
special addresses on the occasion of the opening of the great Fair. 
In the development of the resources of the South, the negro is 
destined to take no small or unimportant part. He is in America 
to stay, and the more encouragement he receives from the white 
man in his efforts to advance, the better it will be for both races 
and for the whole south. 

The wise action of the Atlanta directors ought to be a potent 
factor in allaying race suspicions and jealousies throughout the 
south, and thus bringing about an era of good feeling between 
white and black througout Dixie land." 

These are only a few of the compliments and appreciative ex- 
pressions which Mr. Washington's work and character have 
drawn out, and which we think, justify us in taking the position 
we have taken. 

Prof. Scarborough, who, by the way, can lay some claim to 
greatness himself, under the caption, "Hunting for a Moses," 
says in the New York Age of May last: 

"There is no Douglass living. This generation has not fur- 
nished one, and the generation to come may not furnish one. 
Perhaps never again shall we see quite so wonderful, so unique a 
figure among us. But there may be one who can do what the 
present requires. It may call for some qualities not demanded 
by the past, during Douglass' lifetime and in his work, for to 
some extent different methods must prevail. Still the one who 
is to occupy the place made vacant so recently must be no dema- 
gogue, no extremist, no mere office-seeker, not one thirsting for 
power, possessed of ambition that seeks only self-aggrandizement 
not one on the sole track of wealth, not one whose destructive 
powers are superior to his constructive — one who would build 
barriers by fanning the flames of prejudice even in his own race. 
"On the contrary, the leader must, first of all pcsses elements 
of true manhood, his integrity must be unquestioned, he must 
have breadth of views, be open to conviction and have the cour- 
age of the conviction he holds. He must be discreet and fansee- 
ing with such confidence in movement that he can afford to face 
criticism calmly, secure in the well-grounded belief that the 
course of events will in due time prove the wisdom of his action. 
He must be one who knows when to lead and when to follour» 



15 



and with all he must be able to command the recognition of his 
position on the of other races of men. ' ' 

You have very neatly drawn the picture, Professor, now take 
the subject, not as I have imperfectly presented it, but in its 
perfection of detail, place it by the picture you have drawn, ex- 
amine and compare them, note that the subject is no demagogue 
no office-seeker, no extremist, has no thirst for power, no self 
ambition, no covetousness for wealth, is no destroyer, no build 
er of barriers, but one who on the other hand, possesses all of 
those noble qualities and convictions which you claim for your 
ideal, and you will agree with me that in Booker T. Washing- 
ton, the race has " A Joshua in the camp.'' 



LBAp'15 



-4^ 



